Many people have fantasies about getting it on in an airplane bathroom. I’m not sure why: they’re small, brightly lit, and sometimes poorly ventilated… Oh wait- that sounds exactly like a music practice booth!

For a 5-month stint, I was living out of a suitcase, travelling the globe to teach and work. Through the bleary-eyed time-zone shifts, my only fantasy was to get down with a few minutes of intense music making. I had just met Nuno Tavares and his heavy-rock band Gryflet via the Soundcloud community and the plan was to collaborate on his next album. Between hotels and public engagements however, there was no place to practice the loud and crazy utterances one has to make writing intense lyrics…

On one of my overnight flights suspended over the dark, insomniac ocean, I had the mad idea that I would test out some vocals in the privacy of the Korean Air bathroom. Much to my surprise, the white noise of the jet engines seemed to mask the white noise of screaming: I cranked up my earbuds and went for it, losing myself in Gryflet’s hypnotic walls of guitar fuzz. A sweaty 45 mintues later, I warily emerged to a cabin full of still-sleeping passengers with no flight attendants in sight. I felt I had done something illicit and gotten away with it.

Upon landing on the other side of the world, I made sure to grab an afternoon in my hotel in Brisbane where I could record the vocals and not bother any neighbors while they were out. After a few takes of melting into my headphones and reliving my ‘mile high’ experience, a concierge was already pounding on my door: ‘There are customers just landed trying to sleep. If you keep it up, I will ask you to pack up and vacate the premises!’ Lesson number 2 is that screaming is… well screaming and is inherently loud (and psychotic sounding) when there’s no other sound to mask it. At least I had captured the moment and I’d be moving on to another hotel, another city, and another Gryflet tune…

‘What You Don’t Need,’ is the first of my ongoing collaborations with Gryflet. Part empathy for a close friend, part real-world experience, it’s a song about addiction in its many destructive forms. Read and hear more about (and follow if you like!) Gryflet on their facebook page »

What you don’t Need

Music: written and performed by Gryflet Lyrics and vocals: jh0st

your hands are are not young like the sun…they lie to me, blanket your gardens.

rest in blame on corners highabove this moon.we walk in circles drugged to these fumes.

just swear to me! swear…and you swear to me.‘cause what you don’t need, is for us to stay here and bleed.

and you swear to me. swear…what dark can you bleedfrom the depths of your veins, insane.

run…like moths to a flamefor what you don’t needclosing the circles fate!

and you swear to me! swear…cry to the whisper, weep for what you don’t need.and you swear to me. swear… swear can you leave?